As Brooklyn Minds grows, each new teammate strengthens our ability to serve members of our community. Our staff spotlight series highlights the unique expertise and lived experiences of our newest team members. Today, we welcome Naema Qureshi, MD to our team as a clinical psychiatrist.
Dr. Qureshi specializes in child and adolescent psychiatry and has a broad range of experience across the lifespan. She grew up in the Bronx and Albany, NY as a first-generation American daughter of Pakistani immigrants. After spending several years away for her medical training, she returned to her hometown of Albany, where she lives with her two-year-old son. When she is not working with her Brooklyn Minds patients or at a local hospital, Dr. Qureshi likes spending time with her family and watching comedies (she’s a huge fan of The Office).
We asked Dr. Qureshi a few questions so our community can get to know her better. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What led you to psychiatry? When did you know that was what you wanted to do?
I didn’t decide to go into psychiatry until the last possible moment in my medical school training. Psychiatry was one of my last rotations in my third year of medical school, and before that experience, I didn’t have much knowledge of what psychiatry was. I think if anything I had some negative impressions, from TV and stuff like that. But then when I had my rotation, I worked on an inpatient unit in Brooklyn, and the patients there were really sick. And over for the few weeks that I was there, people got so much better. They went home like themselves, when they’d come into the hospital in a completely different state. And that was the first rotation where I saw people get better like that. It was so profound to see you had such an impact on your patients’ lives. I was originally pursuing a different path, but once I had that rotation I switched everything and decided to go into psych, and I have not looked back.
What led you to Brooklyn Minds?
I wanted to have a different experience working with patients, and it seemed like at Brooklyn Minds, you could be a lot more involved. Since the caseloads were a little bit more manageable, you could get to know your patients better, and hopefully be more helpful to them. Getting to work with patients more closely, getting to spend more time with them and do what’s in their best interest clinically, is exciting to me. I also like being a part of a team, and being able to have colleagues that I share patients with, and participating in working with the community.
How did you end up specializing in child psychiatry?
Similar to how I chose psychiatry, I ended up making that decision at the last possible point in my adult general training. I liked child psych when I went through the rotations in my adult training, but I wasn’t sure if that was what I wanted to do. In psychiatry, you can fast-track out of adult training after three years and go into the child fellowship, or you can do the full four years and then do your child fellowship. I ended up staying the full four years because I wasn’t 100% certain. I decided to go into child psychiatry because I felt like a lot of the cases I had seen in my residency had been so impactful, and with kids, I feel like it’s a little bit more emotionally charged. When you’re seeing kids, and they’re having a hard time it’s just really challenging, I think, to bear witness to that. That had been part of why I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go into child psychiatry, because I didn’t know if it was too intense. But I decided, toward the end of my training, the fact that I felt that way was a sign of how important it was to me. It’s been a good experience. Once you get training, you have a sense of what to do… it doesn’t feel as emotionally overwhelming because you have a game plan.
Could you tell me about an experience or type of experience you’ve had in your career that is particularly meaningful to you?
I like to do family work, and working with parents in particular. It’s a really nice feeling when parents come in and they have a lot of concerns, wondering about their kid, but they also have a lot of knowledge and intuition about what’s gonna be helpful for their child. I like to be able to work with them closely, and hopefully empower them to be able to help their child the best that they can. They’re ultimately the ones who are gonna be with their kid forever, as opposed to me, just coming in temporarily. So I think, when I’ve had experiences where I feel like I can have a good relationship with the parents and we’re kind of working together to help the kid, that’s the most meaningful thing for me.
We appreciate the time Dr. Qureshi took to speak with us and answer our questions, and we are thrilled to have her on our team. If you are interested in working with Dr. Qureshi for yourself or your child, reach out to info@brooklynminds.com.
